Jeff Van Gundy is prepared to go to battle with the team that he has – with or without Patrick Ewing.

“Change is inevitable,” Van Gundy said yesterday after running a coaches clinic at the NBA Store in midtown. “This year is no different than any other.

“The name has changed,” Van Gundy said of the on-again, off-again Ewing trade rumors, “but all coaches go through the same thing. It just so happens that the name is now Patrick, who has been our franchise player for 14 years.”

While he cracked jokes about his impression of Alonzo Mourning’s shoelace during the infamous brawl with the rival Heat in 1997, Van Gundy remains passionate about team defense and gave away some trade secrets, such as what to do with five seconds on the clock and down by a point and what actually goes on in the huddle in the late seconds of a tight game.

This season, Van Gundy is faced with the challenge of getting his team back to the NBA Finals, something they did not accomplish last year. With division foes Orlando and Miami making huge strides toward strengthening their lineups, the Knicks have remained fairly quiet, save for the Ewing rumors.

Faced with the prospect of losing Ewing in a trade before the team meets for camp at the beginning of October, Van Gundy is confident that he can win with the personnel that he has in his locker room.

“If we think that we can make a move to better our team, we owe that to our fans and players,” Van Gundy said.

If Ewing does return, he will be thrown into the awkward situation of sharing a lockerroom with guys that he was thought to have been traded away from last month in a deal that fell through for Glenn Rice and Vin Baker.

“I’m not concerned with how our team will be,” Van Gundy said, citing his gang’s mental toughness. “Our team is a ‘together’ team. They’ll play hard and they are unselfish.”